tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (embedding a circle in S3)

Harry Gindi comments on "embedding a circle in S3" (5566)

Harry Gindi — Fri, 14 May 2010 16:44:26 -0700

@Scott C: My comment about "letting the bad guys win" was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek.

Kevin Buzzard comments on "embedding a circle in S3" (5558)

Kevin Buzzard — Fri, 14 May 2010 14:48:31 -0700

FWIW I percieve a big positive correlation between answers to "is this problem homework?" and "does the user asking have 1 rep?". I might be tempted to answer a homework-looking problem asked by someone with a rep of more than 50, but not otherwise.

Regenbogen comments on "embedding a circle in S3" (5555)

Regenbogen — Fri, 14 May 2010 13:38:13 -0700

For the people who want to close it, there are two courses of action at this juncture:

Option 1. Vote to close with the reason that it is "too vague". In which we enter the discussion of whether the question is vague enough to require closing.

Option 2. Vote to close with the reason that it is a homework problem. In which it should ideally fit the description given by Andy Putman:

However, for the problems I have seen that were obviously hw, I knew the solution immediately without thinking. I think that before voting to close something that you think is hw, you need to know a solution even if you don't write it down.

I myself would like to hear the solution even if it is homework, as I am not knowledgeable at all in knot theory and would be happy to learn something even if it is trivial.

Qiaochu Yuan comments on "embedding a circle in S3" (5554)

Qiaochu Yuan — Fri, 14 May 2010 11:37:13 -0700

The wording of the question suggests that probably the most appropriate course of action on the part of the OP would've been to ask his/her professor for clarification, not us. Whether that merits closing the question I don't know.

Scott Carnahan comments on "embedding a circle in S3" (5553)

Scott Carnahan — Fri, 14 May 2010 10:48:10 -0700

It wasn't obvious to me that this was a homework problem, but perhaps my alarm bells aren't as finely tuned as others'. I've seen Frohman previously post rather obnoxious comments claiming that a problem was obviously homework, and on at least one of those occasions I didn't see any clear evidence, so I decided to ignore his input this time.

The question of how much detail is most helpful to students in the long term is rather thorny, and a typical internet discussion will generally reveal more about people's prejudices regarding human cognition than it will about what is known in the mathematical education research corpus. I usually rely on instincts, and here, they seemed to disagree with others'. In this case, to be honest, the person asking the question seemed sufficiently clueless that I didn't think my answer would have helped her or him complete the hypothetical homework problem in a satisfactory way without further input (say from peers or an instructor). I mostly spelled out some details for the benefit of those who were familiar with complex numbers but hadn't seen torus knots before. I don't think many students are exposed to the rich geometry arising from small neighborhoods of algebraic singularities.

I disagree with Harry's adversarial worldview (cf. "letting the bad guys win"), because I don't think this is a fight. However, I agree that encouraging responses to poorly thought-out questions may lead to lower signal-to-noise ratio in the future. Andy's rule seems like a pretty good way to judge, although I've slipped up in the past while using it.

Harry Gindi comments on "embedding a circle in S3" (5551)

Harry Gindi — Thu, 13 May 2010 16:14:34 -0700

For those just joining us, the post (by Sam Nead) above this one is referring to Scott Carnahan, not Scott Morrison.

Sam Nead comments on "embedding a circle in S3" (5550)

Sam Nead — Thu, 13 May 2010 16:00:20 -0700

I think that this is clearly a homework problem. The most that we should do for the questioner is say "Think of the sphere of radius \sqrt{2} -- you might want to think about the Clifford torus too!" Spelling out the solution (as Scott does) doesn't help the student learn to think... My 2 cents.

Harry Gindi comments on "embedding a circle in S3" (5549)

Harry Gindi — Thu, 13 May 2010 15:44:27 -0700

I think that before voting to close something that you think is hw, you need to know a solution even if you don't write it down.

Yes, absolutely.

Andy Putman comments on "embedding a circle in S3" (5548)

Andy Putman — Thu, 13 May 2010 15:11:10 -0700

I agree that there is no obligation to write out a solution for an obvious hw problem. However, for the problems I have seen that were obviously hw, I knew the solution immediately without thinking. I think that before voting to close something that you think is hw, you need to know a solution even if you don't write it down.

Andrew Stacey comments on "embedding a circle in S3" (5547)

Andrew Stacey — Thu, 13 May 2010 13:54:00 -0700

I agree with Harry.

Harry Gindi comments on "embedding a circle in S3" (5546)

Harry Gindi — Thu, 13 May 2010 13:49:37 -0700

I am of the point of view that before condemning a question as "too simple", "too easy", "homework", etc., one should be able to demonstrate its easiness by clarifying or solving it.

No, because doing this makes it extremely irritating to close unclear questions.

Also, if a question seems like both homework and too easy, then answering it, even in a comment, is letting the bad guys win, so to speak. If a question is too easy but asked in good faith, then I'm alright with leaving an answer/comment, but it should still be seen as going out of your way for someone rather than something that you have to do.

Scott Morrison comments on "embedding a circle in S3" (5545)

Scott Morrison — Thu, 13 May 2010 13:10:54 -0700

(Note I didn't say that I thought it was homework, or indicate that I thought this was the problem -- I reported that others say this.)

Regenbogen comments on "embedding a circle in S3" (5544)

Regenbogen — Thu, 13 May 2010 10:24:25 -0700

I am of the point of view that before condemning a question as "too simple", "too easy", "homework", etc., one should be able to demonstrate its easiness by clarifying or solving it.

Scott Morrison comments on "embedding a circle in S3" (5543)

Scott Morrison — Thu, 13 May 2010 09:46:12 -0700

embedding a circle in S3 has a downvote and some votes to close, and a comment that it looks like a homework question.

I'm genuinely unsure what to do about this question. Yes, it's pretty vague, and not asking a definite question. Yes, it's asking about something that came up in coursework. On the other hand, it's a student not understanding something from a class, that admits some interesting explanation.

Mostly I don't like the question, but I'd also like to encourage beginning grad students to use mathoverflow when appropriate, and I'd like to hear if anyone has ideas about how to do this without allowing too many vague and confused questions.